Towns throughout North Jersey are finding ways to conserve what little road salt they have but expect their supplies to be depleted before the nasty mix of rain, sleet and snow ends 18 hours from now.

Robert Lyons, the director of emergency management for Passaic County, said towns have been scrambling for more than a week to re-stock their salt supplies. There is a shortage across the state, he said.

“Either vendors haven’t come through or some people in the towns underestimated their need,” Lyons said.

However, officials in North Jersey said they have enough salt to get through this storm.

Bergen County had about 1,000 tons of salt on hand as of Wednesday afternoon, enough to get though the current storm, Jeanne Barrata, chief of staff for County Executive Kathleen Donovan, said Thursday.

"Our county yard has been receiving salt deliveries over the last two days and municipalities were receiving continuous deliveries as well," Baratta said in an email. "We should all have ample salt for this storm.”

Earlier this week, Bergen County officials made an emergency purchase of 1,000 tons of salt from a supplier in upstate New York after not being able to get enough salt from two companies with stockpiles in Port Newark.

Lyons said Passaic County has 3,700 tons of salt to cover its roads, which should be more than enough for this storm. In the past, towns and the county have shared their salt supplies with each other, Lyons said.

Lyons said that Prospect Park, with 173 tons, was going to share its supply with Haledon.

Haledon and Totowa began the storm without any road salt, and the city of Paterson was down to about 50 tons as the first snowflakes began to fall. Salt supplies in Ringwood, West Milford, and Woodland Park are also dangerously low, according to figures released this morning by the Passaic County Office of Emergency Management.

Mahwah Mayor Bill Laforet said the township is doing its best to stretch its salt supply by mixing the sparse resource with grit – a very coarse sand. But he is concerned that around noon the storm will turn to rain.

“When we have light snow it's very plowable,” he said. “With heavy, wet snow, it's much more complicated.”

“It stretches the demands of the salt and our ability to get down to blacktop,” Laforet said.

As of this morning, few people were venturing out.

“Put on a pot roast and stay home with your kids,” he said.

Woodland Park Mayor Keith Kazmark said the borough is running low on salt, but has “enough salt to deal with this storm.”

“We’re not going to be as aggressive with using it as if we had a full supply,” Kazmark said.

Bergenfield, too, was struggling with a salt shortage Thursday morning. "We are holding on with what we've got, we are using it sparingly," said Bergenfield DPW Superintendent Edward Kneisler. "We are trying to keep what we can open to the public."

Kneisler said he hopes they will have enough to get through the storm, "but that's not in our control" – municipal salt supplies come through the county, and ultimately from the state's ports, which may be receiving less salt as southern states are themselves crippled by winter weather.

"When you think about it, the whole east coast is getting hit by ice and snow, from Georgia and Florida up," Kneisler said. Of salt, he said, “there's not enough supply to handle what we are getting this year."

Wayne is down to 400 tons of salt, or “one storm’s worth,” according to Tim Collins, superintendent of roads at the Department of Public Works.

“I’m guarding it like it’s gold,” Collins said.

He said he got a 100-ton shipment Wednesday, but added, “I have no idea when I’ll get anymore.”

Thirty plow trucks have been out clearing roads since 4 a.m., when there was about 2 inches of snow, Collins said. The crew hasn’t been using salt as it normally would.

“In an event like this when you’re getting a foot, a foot-and-a-half, plowing and salting is a waste of salt,” Collins said.

But Wayne could be using salt after roads are clean. To conserve salt, it would be mixed with grit, which adds traction to roads but doesn’t melt snow, Collins said.

The city of Passaic has about 75 tons of road salt, which is being used to keep main streets clear for traffic, Fire Chief Patrick Trentacost said.

Trentacost said many of the narrow side streets are clogged with ice and snow and are difficult to negotiate. That situation will only get worse with the storm expected to dump as much as 12 inches of snow on the city.

But with salt supplies already low, residents are being asked to stay indoors and off the streets, he said.